Chapter 1: The Scent of Sage
The thrift store hummed, a low-frequency buzz wedged between the scent of old leather and the damp threat of mildew. Sunlight, thin and anemic, cut through the front window and laid itself out across aisles cluttered with the ghosts of other lives: denim jackets faded to pale blue, stacks of yellowed newspapers, chipped dishes piled on a folding table. A single dusty fan whirred above the register, its blades stirring the warm air like a restless spirit. Leo Hartwell moved through it all, his sneakers causing the floorboards to groan under each step. They sounded like they were whispering, but he couldn’t decipher the language.
He was killing time. His studio apartment waited for him, a box of bland despair with a fridge that coughed and a view of another brick wall. Data entry had sanded down the edges of his mind until everything felt smooth, meaningless, and monotonous. He’d studied business. He’d done the things. Now he just existed, a lanky twenty-three-year-old with messy brown hair and a face that had settled into a look of mild, perpetual disappointment.
He wasn’t looking for anything. Especially not boots.
But there they were, half-hidden under that table of dishes, one toe peeking out from beneath a stack of cracked cereal bowls. They were worn, scarred, a deep brown leather scuffed and softened by use. The heels were worn down on the outside, as if someone had spent a lifetime standing with a particular tilt. Leo crouched, the knees of his jeans protesting, and pulled them free.
They were heavy.Solid. He turned one over; the sole was stitched, not glued, and it bore a faded brand stamp he didn’ recognize. The leather inside was stained a darker color, shaped by the foot that had once occupied it. He set them back down. Then, after a moment, he picked them up again.
At the register, a woman with a nest of silver hair and eyes that held a million transactions looked at the boots, then at him. “Those’ll change your walk,” she said, her voice raspy from decades of dust.
“That a good thing or a bad thing?” Leo asked.
She ran a finger over a long scar along the instep. “Depends on where you’re walking.” She punched a number into the ancient cash register. The keys clacked. “Seven dollars.”
Leo handed over a ten. As she gave him his change, she didn’t look up. “They belonged to a boy who rode lightning,” she said, matter-of-fact, like noting a stain.
“What does that mean?”
“It means he was fast, and he fell hard.” She finally met his gaze. “The boots stayed.”
Back in his apartment, Leo set them on his Ikea coffee table. The hum of his failing fridge filled the silence. He studied them. The light from his single window fell across the leather, highlighting valleys of wear and ridges of tough, surviving hide. He leaned in and breathed deeply. The smell was complex: oil, sweat, hay, dirt, a hint of something smoky and sweet like bonfire. It was the smell of another world.
He kicked off his sneakers. The carpet felt cheap and static under his socks. He picked up the left boot, felt its weight, and slid his foot inside. The leather was cool at first, then seemed to warm, conforming. It was a perfect fit, which was unnerving. He put on the right boot.
Standing up was strange. He was taller. The balance was different; his weight settled back onto his heels. He took a step, the tread solid and confident on the thin carpet. Another step. The room seemed to tilt, or his perception of it did. The constant electronic hum of his appliances—the fridge, the laptop charger, the dormant air conditioner—began to fade. It didn’t die out, but it receded, like someone was turning down a volume knob in his brain.
He took another step toward the mirror hanging on his closet door.
The hum vanished completely, replaced by a chorus of crickets. A dry, warm breeze brushed his cheek. The carpet under his boots became rough, wooden planks.
He wasn’t in his apartment.
He was in a bedroom. A small one. The walls were bare drywall, unpainted. A single rodeo poster was tacked up—a man on a bucking bronco, dust clouding the air. The window was open, night air flowing in, carrying the scent of sand and dried grass. A trophy sat on a dresser, a golden figure on a horse. The bed was unmade, sheets tangled.
Leo’s heart slammed against his ribs. He was still wearing his own clothes—the gray hoodie, the jeans—but his feet were rooted in these strange, heavy boots. He stumbled toward a small mirror above the dresser.
The face that looked back at him was not his.
It was a stranger’s face. Sun-bronzed skin, sharp blue eyes under a strong brow. A scar, fresh-looking and pink, sliced through the skin above the left eyebrow. The hair was blond, cropped short at the sides, a bit longer and messy on top. The expression was one of pure, unadultered confusion, which mirrored Leo’s own feeling exactly, but the features were all wrong. They were rugged.Handsome. Alive.
Leo—in this other body—grabbed at his own jaw, felt the firm line of it, the different structure. He opened his mouth. He made a sound, a choked “uh,” that came out in a voice that was deeper, richer, tipped with a faint drawl he didn’t recognize.
He made a sound, a choked “uh,” that came out in a voice that was deeper, richer, tipped with a faint drawl he didn’t recognize.
His own hands—but not his hands, wider, with calluses and a thin line of a scar across the knuckles—came up to touch the face in the mirror. The sensation was double: he felt the pressure of fingertips on skin, but he also felt the touch on the face itself, a weird feedback loop that made his stomach twist. Panic, cold and sharp, started to climb his spine. He was inside someone else. Someone else’s skin. Someone else’s life.
“Okay,” the strange voice said, trying to steady itself. “Okay, just breathe.”
But breathing in this body felt different. The lungs were larger. The chest was broader. He turned from the mirror, needing to move, to prove this wasn’t a locked dream. The room was real. The plank floor was solid under the boots. He walked to the window and looked out.A dirt yard. A pickup truck, old and coated in dust. Beyond it, flat land stretched out under a huge, star-scattered sky.No brick wall. No city sounds. Just wind and crickets and vast, swallowing quiet.
He had to know who he was.
The room was sparse. Besides the bed and dresser, there was a cheap particle-board desk piled with papers: entry forms for something called “Pecos County Rodeo,” a stack of receipts from a feed store, a worn copy of Pro Rodeo Sports News. Leo’s mind—Leo’s thoughts, somehow still his inside this borrowed head—scanned it all with a data-entry clerk’s efficiency. He needed a name.
On the dresser, next to the trophy, was a brown leather wallet. It was thick, bulging. He picked it up. The leather felt familiar, a cousin to the boots on his feet. He opened it.
Cash, a few twenties. A faded photograph of a woman with sun-bleached hair and a hard smile tucked behind a plastic sleeve. A driver’s license.
He pulled it out.
COLT BRANNIGAN. The name was printed next to a photo of the face from the mirror, but younger, without the scar. Born 03/15/2003. Twenty years old. Address: 1702 Ranch Road, Sand Creek, Texas. He stared at the dates, the location.Texas. He’d never been to Texas. He’d never been anywhere.
There was a health insurance card. A membership card for something called the “Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association.” And finally, tucked in the back, a hospital bracelet, folded and creased. The date was from two months ago. Patient: Brannigan, Colt. Procedure: Contusion & laceration repair. Admit: ER.
Leo held the plastic bracelet, the wallet heavy in his other hand. Colt Brannigan. A boy who rode lightning. The scar on his brow. The boots on his feet. The thrum of the rodeo poster on the wall seemed to pulse in the quiet room. He was standing in a life made of dirt and danger and trophies, a life that was nothing like his own, and he was wearing it. The how didn’t matter yet. The why was a distant question. The only fact that existed now was this: he was here.
And he had no idea how to get back.
And he had no idea how to get back.
Just then he felt a searing pain on his arm. It was a sharp, branding heat, like a needle digging into his skin. He gasped, Colt’s voice rough in the quiet room, and clutched at his forearm. He rolled up the sleeve of his own gray hoodie—his hoodie, on Colt’s arm—and stared.
There, on the inside of his wrist, was a tattoo in stark black ink. It was simple, clean. It displayed the number 72.
He watched, breath held, as the ink seemed to shift, to ripple like dark water. The numerals blurred, reconfigured. The 7 softened, the 2 straightened. In a silent, unnerving transition, the number changed.71.
A cold understanding washed over him, deeper and more final than the initial shock of the mirror. It wasn’t just a switch. It was a loan. He had seventy-two hours in this body.This life. The boots were the key, not just the door. He’d have to put them on again, back in his apartment, to reset the clock. If he even could get back.
His mind raced, calculations clicking over like the old thrift store register. Seventy-one hours left. To do what?To live this? To find a way out? The urgency was a physical weight, a knot in Colt’s stomach—which was now, effectively, his own.
He needed to move. To learn.
The house was quiet. He stepped out of the bedroom, the boots feeling less foreign now, more like a necessary anchor. The hallway led to a small living room: a worn leather couch, a flat-screen TV, a shelf with more trophies and framed photos. A kitchenette with a dirty coffee mug on the counter. Everything was tidy, but lived-in.Real.
Outside, the night air was vast. It felt different in this body; the warmth was comforting, not oppressive. He walked onto the porch, wood creaking under his weight. The pickup truck was a Ford, older, its paint dulled by a fine layer of dust. Beyond the fence line, the darkness stretched, flat and endless. A single light glowed from a distant structure—a barn, maybe.
He heard a sound behind him, the soft click of a door.
“Colt? You’re up early.”
Leo froze. The voice was female, older, tired. He turned slowly.
A woman stood in the doorway of the main house, silhouetted by a yellow hall light. She was the woman from the wallet photo, but older, more worn. Her hair was tied back, her face lined with sun and what looked like perpetual concern.
“Just… couldn’t sleep,” Leo said, using Colt’s voice. It felt like wearing a mask that talked.
She stepped onto the porch, wearing a robe. Her eyes—sharp, blue, like Colt’s—scanned him. “You’re wearing strange clothes.” Her gaze landed on his hoodie, his city jeans. “You feeling alright? That head still bothering you?”
“Head’s fine,” Leo said quickly, touching the scar above his eyebrow. A souvenir from riding lightning. “Just… trying something different.”
She smiled, a thin, worried smile.“Different. Okay.” She looked out at the dark land. “Ranch truck’s got a flat. Hank said he’d fix it first light. You’re on feed run today. Need to be at the arena by four for practice.”
Practice.Arena. The words were directives, bullets of a life he didn’t know. Leo just nodded, a stiff, foreign gesture.
“Get some real sleep, son,” she said, patting his shoulder—Colt’s shoulder—before turning back inside. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
The door closed. Leo stood alone in the vast Texas dark, the cicadas screaming in the emptiness.